I was endlessly scrolling on Netflix one day, looking to see if there was a semi decent romcom to watch on my own. In the “Coming next” section, a trailer caught my eye.
MAI is a Vietnamese romcom about a young, single mom who meets a younger playboy neighbor, and drama inevitably ensues. It was a number one hit in Vietnam that locally performed three times better at the box office than The Avengers. That’s huge. No wonder it had made its way to Netflix. I was curious to see what kind of movies were being made in Vietnam, and it’d give me a window into contemporary language and culture, something I was completely disconnected from as a Vietnamese American. I marked it on my calendar so I wouldn’t forget.
Fast forward to the weekend when it was finally available on Netflix. I settled in on the couch on a Saturday night, my Chinese Vietnamese husband at his desk behind me, periodically asking me questions about what was going on. I had the English subtitles on because while I could pick out words here and there, I wasn’t fluent enough to understand everything. We both could, however, understand when the characters threw in occasional English phrases, and we’d laugh at how relatable it was, hearing English in Vietnamese accents, just like we would from our family members in America. That, at least, we could count on being the same.
As for the movie itself? I’d give it a solid 7/10, better than some of the cheesy, cringy American romcoms on Netflix, but there’s something about it that holds me back from running to my closest non-Vietnamese friends and insisting they add it to their watchlist. Browsing online, I saw it has a 6.8/10 rating on IMDB, which checks out with me, but an abysmal 35% on Rotten Tomatoes, albeit only three critics reviewed it, with two 5 stars and one 1 star. I found the 1 star critic’s in-depth post elsewhere, which elaborated on his view that the movie was “tonally” all over the place with confounding, impulsive choices that didn’t have the intended impact on the scene it was supposed to enhance.
This was a local box office smash. There had to be a good explanation for this. Some articles briefly talked about the reasons why, but I didn’t find anything in depth, and I wanted to probe deeper into the possibilities contributing to its success as well as considering some of its weaknesses.
I’m going to step back and first think about what I personally liked or disliked about this film.
Disclaimer: as a Vietnamese American, I probably understood some of the context, but undoubtedly I would not get all of the context.
Disclaimer two: I’m not a movie critic, just someone who works in the design field and has a general appreciation of creative mediums.
Disclaimer three: spoilers ahead.
The Good
One of the more positive articles I read said that this movie has something for everyone, and the more that I think about it, the more I find that to be true. There’s romance, there’s comedy, there’s drama, there’s melodrama, there’s even a horror-esque scene. Not only that, it ticks off multiple tropes: young woman meets young man, hot mom dates younger man, poor hard-working woman dates rich playboy, rich boy’s family rejects poor girlfriend, three generation drama, female empowering friendships, petty women drama, friendships falling out, bullying, betrayal… The list goes on.
Another positive article cited that part of its success is in depicting urban life. Though not explicitly stated (I don’t think), I assume it takes place in the bustling city of Ho Chi Minh City and shows the daily struggle of being poor, making ends meet, dealing with struggles at home and at work, and the sacrifice of personal happiness for supporting family. These are struggles experienced in every city, in every country, in every culture.
The lead actor and actress are not, perhaps, model perfect like they might be in a flawless k-drama, but it might be this realness that makes them relatable to the average viewer. We could believe that we are either one of them, experiencing the same highs and lows, unlike perhaps the unattainable perfection of a romcom fantasy. One might even argue that the lead actress is not pretty enough to turn all the heads of the men in her apartment complex or entice all the male clientele at the massage parlor that she works at. In some ways it reflects reality with the idea that beauty can be perceived through the lens of novelty, competence, personality, or some combination thereof.
The Camera
Let’s talk about the camera work. I personally did not find the editing tonally off-putting. Maybe it’s because I found it refreshing from American films, which have started to feel a bit cookie cutter in its polished, third-person camera. In some ways, the many different ways in which the camera is employed matches the film’s embodiment of so many different genres.
We start the movie with a fixed shot, low to the ground, only capturing the protagonist’s sneakers as she exits a taxi, endures a thrown beer can when she rejects the driver’s overtures, crushes the can with one foot, and tosses it in the trash off-screen before rolling her suitcase to the next view. Slowly, the camera works its way up until we finally get a clear shot of her face, weary from travel, until she arrives at a seedy apartment complex, where the camera pans up the communal, outdoor atrium and up to the roof, revealing an unsightly, complex tangle of wiring.
Whose perspective are we viewing from the camera? An omniscient narrator? An artsy director? Multiple unnamed perspectives? I don’t know how to answer that from a filmmaking point of view, but I see the significance in choosing to go from the ground to the sky. We’re meeting the protagonist at a low moment in her life–maybe not the lowest moment, but neither is it her best–and her goal is to keep a low profile while working her way towards a better life.
The camera eventually switches to a first-person point of view, from Mai’s eyes, as she makes her way up through chaotic scenes, encountering each of the neighbors who will give her grief, before colliding into her young, hot neighbor. This jerks us out of her body and back to a third-person view. It’s an immersive sequence that I think serves to have the viewer empathize with her soaking in the details of her surroundings.
Later in the movie, the director employs the first person camera view again, this time embodying one of the male neighbors who has heard rumors that Mai provides other paid services besides being a masseuse. The critical review wonders why the camera would take the view of the perpetrator. It’s a valid question, one that I’ve tried to reason. Is it because the director wants us to see how the protagonist earnestly looks for tape as the neighbor requested to help fix a loose lightbulb in the hall? Or to see her reaction when he is yet another foolish man propositioning her when she has shown no clear interest? Or is it because the director is a man himself, now embodying a male character?
This one particular scene doesn’t lend itself easily to a clear explanation. At the time it hadn’t bothered me as I watched the movie, but now that the critic pointed it out, I can’t ignore the deliberate storytelling choice and wonder if there is further validity to questioning other scenes in the movie that might seem tonally off.
One comes to mind when the tension between Mai and a jealous coworker comes to a head in the locker room.
The coworker previously locks Mai in the bathroom, intending to leave her there overnight after a late day at work. Mai continually bangs on the door in absolute darkness to no avail–until the security guard, whom Mai has always been kind to, rescues her from the dark. Mai asks how he knew to look for her, and he says it was because he noticed she didn’t come say goodbye to him like she usually did.
For a moment, I was worried that he was yet another besotted man looking to gain sexual favors in return for rescuing her, given the dark lighting of the scene. Thankfully, that turned out not to be the case. The older gentleman genuinely cares for her and even drives her home on his motorbike given how late it is and the bullying that just occurred. He offers to tell management about this incident, but Mai insists he doesn’t as she doesn’t want to cause further trouble. He is the caring father figure that Mai does not have in her own biological father, who as we discover over the course of the movie is an absolute piece of trash. More about that later.
Fast forward to the fight in the locker room. The coworker has just been fired and furiously, if mistakenly, believes that Mai had tattled to management after all. (Girl, please, you brought this upon yourself and now karma is served.) The coworker slaps Mai so hard that she slams her shoulder into a locker. Here, the movie pauses and zeroes in on Mai’s face before the scene suddenly switches to horror mode, and everyone who has bullied her up to this point lunges toward her, one by one, as a zombie–until the last part, when the only supportive female neighbor whispers in her ear, “Fight.”
We’re launched back into the present, where Mai, normally composed despite her numerous trials, lets loose and engages in an over the top cat fight with the jealous coworker, causing a huge upset in the various locker rooms and spa rooms of the establishment. The manager runs in to break up the fight, apologizes to the clients for the disturbance, and tells Mai to go to the office, supposedly for disciplining. Instead, Mai tells the manager that she quits, to the manager’s complete dismay as she is his star employee. The jealous ex-coworker also looks on in disbelief as she had, up to this point, thought that Mai was purposefully driving her out to solidify Mai’s security.
Choosing to veer into horror doesn’t necessarily seem out of place given that maybe it could link back to the night when Mai was locked in the bathroom and all we saw were dark, empty hallways with no sign of help coming. Or maybe the horror scene could also be thought of as Mai’s internal thoughts being haunted by these monsters, wearing her down. One might argue that the director could have done the horror filter without turning everyone into zombies and perhaps that might have gotten the same point across without being over the top. But it’s interesting to note that the director is also a comedian, and I wonder if that played into some of his stylistic decisions. Maybe portraying the bullies as zombies lightens the mood of an otherwise intense, emotional moment. Or maybe going all in on horror better segued into the sudden snap from the composed Mai to “I’m going to beat the crap out of everyone” Mai.
The Romance
So, this is supposed to be a rom com, right? What about the romance?
Some might argue that the playboy neighbor Duong comes on as yet another young man who can’t seem to take a hint when she repeatedly rebuffs his unwelcome advances, but because he’s the male love interest and is young, handsome, and rich, he eventually gets a pass as she lets him gradually into her life. While he was handsy with her at first, he admits in a conversation to backing off with the physical touch when she did not reciprocate. At least there’s some consent there, I guess.
And yes, while his behavior probably seems problematic by American standards, I’ve read enough romance webcomics to know that this kind of toxicity could be much worse between the male and female leads. By comparison, Duong is just an immature playboy who thinks every woman wants him, so he had assumed she would want the same with him. Yet when she proved him wrong, he slowly starts to change and finds ways to prove he’s interested in the long term. His interactions don’t continue to be toxic after the beginning, which is key to getting invested in their romantic relationship.
I found it fascinating watching a very similar premise to The Idea of You starring Anne Hathaway and Nick Galitzine so soon after in MAI, albeit with a Vietnamese take. Warning: spoilers ahead for both movies. In both movies, we follow the story of a hot young mom who happens to meet a rich young man. The novel, for which The Idea of You was based on, apparently had a controversial ending. I did not personally read the novel myself, but from what I understand, the protagonist Solene breaks up with the celebrity singer for one last time in order not to hold him back from a fulfilling career and love life. Fans were devastated that there was no happy ending. The movie, however, altered the ending so that, yes, Solene and the celebrity singer do break up after a rocky relationship of on again, off again, but with the promise that if they were not seeing anyone else in five years, that they would reunite and revisit their relationship. At the end of the movie, we see the celebrity singer casually show up five years later at Solene’s art gallery, just as he did at the beginning of their relationship, and it’s implied that they give their relationship another chance. Sad fans were happy fans once more.
How does MAI handle the rockiness of a hot young mom dating a man seven years her junior? I sort of assumed with the overwhelming popularity of k-dramas that perhaps Vietnamese films would follow suit in providing a happy ending, but it just shows that I’ve forgotten how Vietnamese culture embraces bittersweet endings. So many Vietnamese fairy tales, folktales, and great works of literature end in bittersweetness. After a particularly dramatic climax, the two star-crossed lovers look out over the river at night and make a promise amid tears to revisit their relationship in two years, if they are not seeing anyone else. Only two years, not even five like it is in The Idea of You. In the final scene of MAI, we’ve returned to the first person camera from Mai’s point of view, bookending the start of the movie, as she walks through a luxury spa that she herself now manages. It’s the happy ending of a woman who against all odds has found success and financial stability. All she needs is the love of her man, and all will be well. Right?
Enter Duong, dressed sharp and clean-shaven. As they exchange greetings, Duong is moved to tears, and we think, this is it, they’re going to get together. Duong has matured into a man, supposedly with a stable job, and Mai has overcome her troubled past of poverty and trauma to find professional success. Then, a pretty pregnant woman comes up by Duong’s side, matching him in an outfit of a mature shade of brown, camel or caramel, whichever you prefer. Duong and his wife are expecting a baby boy. To make things worse, Duong’s mom, formerly Mai’s friend, appears recovered from a stroke that occurred two years ago–a friend close enough to call a sister, a friend who frequented Mai’s spa, a friend who had encouraged Mai to find true love, a friend who had given Mai’s no-good dad a job when he was down on his luck, a friend who paid off Mai’s dad’s mountain of debt, a friend who persuaded Mai to end things with her son, a friend who tried to barter Mai’s promise to end things with her son by paying for Mai’s daughter’s study abroad, a friend who paid Mai’s dad to spill the dark and terrible secret that her dad had sold off her virginity when she was young, leading to the birth of her daughter.
The unwitting wife cordially shepherds her mother-in-law to the luxury spa to let Duong and Mai have a moment to themselves. Mai keeps things polite. After all, she had given Duong permission to pursue love if love came to him. Right on time, a sleek car pulls up and a young, handsome man in the driver’s seat waves to Mai. She says her boyfriend has come and proceeds to get in the front seat. Then, the boyfriend says something along the lines of, “Boss? Aren’t you going to sit in the back?” He’s not her boyfriend, just the chauffeur. The car pulls forward and once there’s some distance between Mai and where she had left Duong standing, she collapses into tears.
Maybe she had pretended in front of Duong to save face, that she too had found someone else. But maybe she is making yet another sacrifice for someone she cares for, by pretending in front of Duong so that he does not feel bad about his choice to move on, just as she had sacrificed herself for her daughter, her father, and her former friend.
It’s the exact kind of heart-wrenching ending that, I think, resonates with a Vietnamese audience. There’s always a constant pressure to sacrifice personal happiness for the happiness of others, and it reflects a cruel yearning where true love is always just out of reach.
The Storytelling
One of the storytelling aspects that I enjoyed most about this movie is the way the director weaves so many poetic threads and parallels throughout the plot and between the characters. That, I think, is why the movie manages to hold together despite some of its other flaws.
The Beta Fish
In the beginning, we see Mai rolling along her meager belongings with one hand and holding a glass container with water in the other. It’s a precarious situation, and with all the many stairs of her new apartment, I did wonder what was in the glass container and the importance of it to the story. When she collides into Duong on a landing, she inevitably drops it, and the glass plus its contents of pebbles and plants explode on the ground. She urgently searches among the fragments to find, as the camera zooms in, a blue beta fish that she has idiosyncratically named “Puppy.” Duong happens to have a water bottle on him, and in a white knight moment, he offers it to Mai to safely transport the beta fish the rest of the way. They briefly banter about the name “Puppy,” with Duong commenting on its absurdness, but Mai is laser-focused on getting settled in. She refuses his help to carry her things, just as she had consistently refused another male neighbor’s offer, and he settles for promising to clean up the mess instead. We don’t know if he does clean up the mess, but it’s a sweet gesture to include in the dialogue.
It’s never explained why the beta fish is so important to Mai. Was it a gift? Did it represent something or someone to her? Was it simply a reminder of home in a strange, new place? Regardless, the director chooses to represent lonely, cool Mai as a blue beta fish with the dependability of a loyal dog.
A few scenes later, when Duong has pivoted from heavy flirting to well-meaning gestures, he appears at her door with a generous fish tank, complete with pebbles and plants, along with a red beta fish named “Kitty” to keep “Puppy” expiring from loneliness. As a former beta fish owner, I’ll add a note here that beta fish do better alone as they tend to fight if there’s another beta fish in the same tank. Mai doesn’t want to be indebted to anyone, but she accepts the fish tank as repayment. Plus, she’s tight for money, and a fish tank as large as the one Duong gifts her might be out of her normal budget. The large fish tank is, however, an indication that Duong is richer than he lets on, which begs the question of why is he living in such a seedy apartment? What does he do for a living? Or what family does he come from?
The red beta fish obviously symbolizes Duong. He’s a passionate lover intent on sparking a relationship with the cool-headed Mai. He’s the polar opposite to her in both color and personality, as “Kitty” implies the fickleness of a cat or the brattiness of a spoiled kitten.
The two beta fish come back in a much later scene. This is after the bombshell reveal that Mai’s dad sold her virginity when she was young to pay off his gambling debts, and now he’s been paid by Mai’s supposed friend to divulge this secret, thereby ruining any chance of Mai being with Duong. To Duong’s credit, he doesn’t care about Mai’s past, but Mai’s former friend ensures her greatest fear that she would never be accepted by any respectable family. Mai, of course, has been working herself to the bone to make money to support herself and her daughter as well as to pay off her dad’s debts. To have him sabotage any chance of her finding happiness is the last straw. She takes the pile of carefully stacked bills and flings them from the third story into the central courtyard, where the poor inhabitants gleefully scramble at the free money. Absolutely stricken with panic, the dad rushes out the door, in his haste knocking the fish tank to the ground, running down the stairs, crashing into a neighbor, and falling to his death. We see the one well-meaning female neighbor (the one who advised Mai to “fight”) dial for help. Mai and her daughter both look down over the railing in a state of shock. Both of them had hated her dad (or granddad) for holding them back again and again. His greed and addiction had known no end. They were now free of him, but did it justify his death? Would Mai carry this new guilt of causing her father’s death on her burdened shoulders? In a world where money was everything, money now meant nothing to a dead man.
The detail of the fish tank is just one more metaphor in how Mai’s dad is the one who destroys the potential love between Mai and Duong. The crash at the beginning and now the crash at the end, bookending an ill-fated love story that was never meant to be.
I’ll just point out a side note here that made it slightly confusing in the beginning but interesting in hindsight. The three actors representing three generations are only separated from each other by approximately six years. The actress who plays 37-year-old Mai is actually 32. She gracefully looks the part, and I had no problem believing it, but the actress who plays her daughter is 26. Though the daughter’s age is never explicitly stated, we could assume if Mai was 17 when she had a child, then theoretically the daughter could be 20, give or take a few years. With an older actress portraying the daughter, I initially thought the daughter’s character was a friend or sister that Mai had left behind. As for the actor playing the dad, he is actually 37 and also happens to be the comedian and director himself. The dad’s character is truly a terrible one, so I don’t know if the director couldn’t find anyone to cast or if he took it upon himself to play perhaps the worst character in the entire movie. Plus that fatal fall down the stairs? It was a comedic moment in an otherwise emotionally fraught and tragic scene.
The Father Figure
Speaking of dads, it’s clear that Mai’s father has been nothing but a villainous obstacle sabotaging his family’s hopes for security, success, and happiness. He claims that he’ll stop gambling out of love for his child, but it repeatedly never happens and he finally pays for it with his life. At one point in the movie, he becomes a security guard to help make money, but it’s obvious in the parallel comparison that while he may have the same occupation, he’ll never provide the security that Mai needs.
Meanwhile the security guard at the spa looks out for Mai, as we saw in the scene where he rescues her from the locked bathroom, but there’s also a quick and touching scene early on in the movie. On the way to work, Mai gives the security guard a gift (food, if I recall? Like a sandwich or lunch of sorts? I’ve only seen the movie once), and in return, the security guard gives her a generous container of “civet coffee.” It seems like an oddly specific thing to translate from Vietnamese to English, though at this point I was not surprised at the director’s inclusion of such a detail. I had also recently read an article briefly discussing how Starbucks had failed to take off in Vietnam because they hadn’t understood the cultural importance of drip coffee and socializing in Vietnamese culture. So there must be some significance to this exchange.
Civet coffee, it turns out, is a very expensive coffee due to the intensive nature of its production. It also requires an acquired taste for partially digested coffee cherries that are eaten by Asian palm civets and fermented when the cherries pass through the civets’ intestines. Whether you find the concept of civet coffee weird or delectable, it’s clear what the exchange in the movie represents.
Mai’s father has never given her anything of value. The security guard, however briefly he has known her, values their relationship as much as civet coffee is valuable in Vietnamese culture. When the security guard drops her off safely at home after the bullying incident, we see a shot of Mai placing her hand over his on the motorbike handle. She wishes that she had a father like him, but that is not her luck.
I worried after the security guard played such an important role that something dreadful would happen to him. Thankfully, the security guard appears at the end, carrying a bouquet of flowers when he visits Mai at the luxury spa. Perhaps he will never be her biological father, but he is the father figure that she always wanted.
The Single Mother
Now, this is a fascinating parallel between Mai and her rich friend, Dao. We don’t know exactly how they met, but it’s clear that they’ve been long-time friends despite an apparent age gap with Dao being older and having more time to become rich and successful. She has tried to get Mai to join her business, but Mai declines on the grounds that money can complicate a friendship, which I agree with. Perhaps they both bonded over being single mothers raising a child. Everyone loves a female empowering friendship, right? And we see Dao doing exactly that. She respects Mai’s wishes not to join her in business and encourages her in other aspects, like chasing after true love. Dao supports Mai in other ways, like letting Mai’s daughter work as a cashier and offering Mai’s dad employment as a security guard at her establishment. When gangsters show up at the coffee shop demanding money from Mai’s dad, Dao throws down enough money to cover the outstanding debt of $21,000, not $2,500 as Mai had been originally led to believe by her father. Ashamed and embarrassed that her rich friend has to step in, Mai promises to pay Dao back and demands her father meet her outside for a necessary conversation.
Paying off the debt of a friend’s dad–that’s the epitome of friendship, isn’t it?
All of that comes tumbling down when it turns out that Mai has fallen in love with Duong, who is none other than Dao’s wayward son. One of the challenges I find in speaking Vietnamese is knowing how to address others–are they peers? Older? Younger? Family or friends? Friends of siblings? Friends of parents? Friends of grandparents? It’s a nuanced library of terms. So Mai falling in love with her friend’s son absolutely brings up gnarly questions of generational and interpersonal relationships. Mai and Dao as friends are peers to each other, but Mai dating Duong would place her below Dao. What comes first, the friendship between Mai and Dao or the relationship between Mai and Duong?
That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Dao logically lays out all the problems that we know someone as level-headed as Mai is probably all too aware of as a single mom herself. If Duong breaks Mai’s heart, how can Dao look her friend in the eye? Dao knows that despite her best efforts, Duong is not a man who can support Mai. Duong has no real job or career. All this time, he’s been playing piano at none other than one of Dao’s establishments. His apartment is paid for by his mother. Duong has never known what it means to struggle, and he also refuses to take responsibility by partaking in the family business. To prove this point, Dao cuts Duong off from all financial support. Instead of Duong crawling home begging for forgiveness, he seems set on proving himself as a man.
When appealing to Duong’s inadequacies isn’t enough, things take a darker turn. While Dao may cherish a friendship with Mai, she finds Mai unacceptable for her son. Mai is seven years older with a grown child, who is a lesbian. Mai has a terrible father, is poor, and works as a masseuse, a profession often associated with prostitution. To make matters worse, Mai is indeed tainted with the association of prostitution through her father selling her virginity against her will.
The final straw? When Dao arranges a dinner, hoping to barter Mai’s breakup with Duong in exchange for Mai’s daughter fulfilling her dream of studying music abroad. Mai, her daughter, and Duong all prepare to leave the dinner at this indignity, but they are stopped by the appearance of Mai’s dad and his subsequent betrayal. The dinner devolves into a fight, and Dao, realizing that nothing she does will get her what she wants, has what appears to be a stroke.
Family ties run strong in Vietnamese culture. We know from the beginning that Mai wants Duong to remain close with his mom as Mai has been lucky to remain close with her daughter. However, when Dao has a stroke, this means Duong must care for his mom, and there’s no room for Mai. Whereas Dao forces Duong to become a particular person, Mai accepts her daughter for who she is, showing her acceptance when her daughter’s girlfriend cheerfully says hello on a video call.
The Musician
When Duong first learns that Mai has a grown daughter, this fact takes him time to process. After a while, he comes to terms with it. It would be unreasonable, after all, for a 37-year-old woman not to have had any children. At least the daughter, Binh Minh, is fully grown and can take care of her own future versus being a 2- or 3-year old who needs to be raised by a mature father ready to take on the responsibility. Duong can see himself being friends with Binh Minh.
And that’s what he does. When he comes over to the house where Binh Minh is staying with Mai’s dad, Duong and Binh Minh competitively play video games together. When Duong learns that Binh Minh similarly dreams of becoming a musician, he gifts Binh Minh with a brand new keyboard of her own. Everything seems to be going well.
Until it doesn’t. Duong’s mom has his cousin, who manages the establishment where Duong has been playing piano at, fire him, forcing him to find other work. We see a shot of him attempting to teach piano to a boy who isn’t naturally gifted. Duong slaps the boy’s hand when he plays something wrong, and the boy’s mother immediately fires him. At another cafe, we see Duong energetically playing piano when the manager comes up and abruptly asks him to leave with his last paycheck. Duong is too busy playing masterpieces instead of background music, leaving the cafe patrons unable to talk. Duong lets his ego talk, declaring he doesn’t need the last paycheck, and walks out, only to run into the cafe’s next hire, Binh Minh. She awkwardly takes his spot at the piano, where she presumably will flatten her ego enough to play the kind of soft music the manager wants.
As though Binh Minh feels guilty for supplanting him as the cafe musician, or perhaps to repay for the gift of the keyboard, we see a scene of her running after him. She tells him that Mai only said the harsh words that she did because she wants to push Duong away for his own good, but deep down, Mai loves him and the happiest she’s been was when she was with him. This motivates Duong to keep trying.
We assume he finds work somehow when he shows up at Mai’s apartment and gifts her two things, a four-leaf clover necklace and a gold ring, which I’ll touch on in a moment.
At the end of the movie, we see Binh Minh in a band, possibly abroad, just as she had dreamed, a reward for her patience and hard work. Meanwhile, Duong? We don’t know if he’s still playing piano at the end. The fact that he’s cleaned up and starting a family with a supposedly approved woman might mean that he’s fallen into line and is doing exactly what his mother had planned for him all along. For all his ego and talk of perseverance, he was never able to overcome his nickname of “Worm” to become the butterfly he always dreamed of.
The Silver Necklace
The four-leaf clover necklace is meaningful in two ways. The first and most obvious is that Mai needs all the luck she can get, and what is luckier than a four-leaf clover?
The second is that the silver necklace is a replacement for a silver necklace Mai had received, also as a gift, from her friend Dao. After learning that Dao is Duong’s mother, Mai insists on returning Dao’s gift. This clover necklace from Dao’s son is meant to fill the hole as Duong steps up to be Mai’s emotional support.
The Meaning of Gold
As for the gold ring? That, too, has two meanings. The first is that the ring is just a form for the gold to be stored until the gold needs to be exchanged for money. Earlier in the movie, Mai slams down the remaining money she has along with two small blocks of gold to go towards her father’s gambling debt. The dad selfishly takes the meager savings from his daughter. So the gold ring is Duong’s attempt to help Mai, with the promise that he’ll save up enough to buy gold talents in the future.
The second is that Mai realizes how much she loves Duong and is willing to try again to make it work. The ring then becomes a symbol of their love for each other until the day they can get married and buy real wedding rings for each other.
We, of course, know how their romance plays out.
Mai and The Worm
Mai as a name means a yellow flower that’s often used to decorate homes during the auspicious Lunar New Year. Yet Mai in the movie seems to have anything but auspicious beginnings in life. ‘Mai’ as a word in common Vietnamese means tomorrow, and we see Mai always yearning for a better tomorrow. Duong hints at this meaning at one point when he’s flirting with her.
Meanwhile, Duong goes by the nickname Sau, meaning ‘worm.’ It’s not an attractive name by any means, and in this particular case, it’s interpreted as a caterpillar that will, after a time of gorging itself and spending time in a cocoon, blossom into a beautiful and free butterfly. This is in contrast to his real name, Duong, which means manly and virile. Okay, he proves himself to be virile with his playboy persona, but Duong is more worm than manly. He feeds on his mother’s money and cocoons himself in a seedy apartment. He dreams of one day blossoming into an accomplished musician with the love of a beautiful woman. By the end of the movie, it’s unclear if he ever left the cocoon of his mother’s grip.
Both characters are left yearning for a dream painted by their name.
Are there other characters with meaningful names? There’s at least two more that play a significant role in the story.
Dao, Mai’s friend, means peach blossom, another flower that’s commonly used to decorate homes during the auspicious Lunar New Year. Two auspicious flowers, two friends, two single mothers.
Binh Minh, Mai’s daughter, means peace or dawn. At least, I had always thought it meant ‘peace,’ but Google shows overwhelming results for ‘dawn.’ I think it could work either way. Binh Minh brought peace to her mom by always being supportive. She replaces Mai’s habit of drinking coffee before bed with a peaceful tea and massages her mom’s calves. After all, who will massage the masseuse? Binh Minh finds peace of her own at the end, pursuing music and a girlfriend. If her name means ‘dawn,’ then Binh Minh represents Mai’s hope of a new start, be it life or love or generational struggles. Binh Minh only insisted on living with Mai’s dad so that Mai could have a chance at finding love. After all, what kind of man would want to date someone who comes with baggage, or “add-on” as Duong and his cousin mention in an early conversation? When it becomes clear that there is no point to living with Mai’s dad, Binh Minh finally agrees to move in with her mom and perhaps usher in a new chapter when the two of them can be happy together as mother and daughter. By the end of the movie, Binh Minh finds her own new dawn with a career in music and her own love life.
I wouldn’t be surprised with the director’s attention to detail if the other characters had carefully chosen names, but these were the ones that stood out the most to me with my somewhat limited background in Vietnamese names.
Final Thoughts
MAI is an enjoyable movie to entertain on a Saturday night and gives a glimpse into the contemporary Vietnamese mindset. Stories told outside of the Western lens provide a breath of fresh air from an otherwise increasingly stale and predictable formula. While I consider rom coms to be a guilty pleasure, this one gave me a lot to think about long after the credits rolled.
Since the 1960s, Vietnam has been associated with the Vietnam War, Americans, Communism, or French Colonialism if you reach further back. Like every other country though, Vietnam has long since moved past this particular bit of history. The people living there have everyday hopes and dreams like people anywhere else. It’s refreshing to watch a story steeped in Vietnamese culture and community that doesn’t harken back to the trauma of the twentieth century.
At Wood's Edge 